All organizations and companies store information and data related to their business, such as personnel data, operational costs, customer information, and the like, to facilitate their interactions with other companies, customers and employees. Many tools have been developed to make collecting data easier, faster, and more convenient than ever before.
In order to be meaningful and most useful, data should be logically organized and stored. For example, computers often rely on data structures to store data in predefined fields. For large amounts of data, databases can be used to store and organize structured collections of data and/or records in accordance with predefined rules or database models.
Relationship models, hierarchy models, and network models, are common models for use in representing relationships among entities of information stored in databases. Typically, a database relies on database software to organize and manage data or entities of information. For example, database software organizes and stores data and records using various types of database models.
One mechanism for displaying data and allowing users to manipulate the data is a graphical user interface. User interfaces (UIs) provide a mechanism by which users can interact with a machine, device, or system. A user interface includes physical hardware and software components that together provide a means of inputting information to allow a user to manipulate a system, and provide a means of outputting information to allow the system to indicate the effects of the user's manipulation. A graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of user interface that utilize images and graphics, in addition to text, to facilitate interaction between a user and the system. For example, a GUI may offer graphical icons, windows, and/or buttons to represent information and actions available to the user.
Examples of systems that may incorporate a graphical user interface include, but are not limited to, computers or computing systems, communications devices including mobile phones, music and media players, gaming systems, navigation systems, appliances, and many other devices and machines. User interfaces are generally intended to make a user's interaction with these systems easier and more productive. Therefore, the GUIs discussed above provide a helpful way for displaying data, such as that stored in a database, and showing the relationships thereof to users.